With the proliferation of gaming, personal website, instant messaging, and virtual reality scenarios, more and more users wish to enter websites and virtual worlds as artistically modified versions of themselves. However, conventional vector-based cartoon generators for making a caricature, gaming figure, or avatar of oneself can end up providing poorly executed or amateurish-appearing results, or may lose various facial qualities that make the user recognizable as a unique individual. Often the conventional techniques provide too much exaggerated caricature. What is needed is a system that maintains or improves the attractive integrity and recognizable qualities of a human face while converting an image of the user's face to a cartoon style.